Finding your artists: The gallerist's eye at work

01What "discovering an artist" actually means

The word "discovery" is one of the most overused in the art world. In the day-to-day reality of the profession, a gallerist almost never "discovers" an artist from nothing. He crosses paths with them, crosses paths again, follows their work for months, sometimes years, before proposing any collaboration. This slow process of observation is fundamental: it is what separates a serious gallerist from one who simply rides the wave of whatever is fashionable.

What a gallerist is concretely looking for is not a single beautiful work. It is a body of work. A coherence. A visible trajectory running through the practice, even if the artist is still very young. Nicolas Party, now represented by Hauser & Wirth, was noticed when he was showing stylised landscapes and portraits in small venues in Glasgow and Brussels — his visual language was already identifiable, unmistakable, long before his market value began to climb. This is precisely the criterion — the existence of a "personal language" — that distinguishes a representable artist from one who is simply talented.

Coherence in a body of work also implies a legible evolution. Recent pieces must answer the earlier ones without repeating them. An artist who explores, who takes formal risks while remaining recognisable, reassures a gallerist far more than one who has perfected a single style but allowed it to calcify.

02Finding talent: between the field and the screen

Contemporary gallerists draw on a diverse ecosystem of sources to identify new talent. Art schools remain essential breeding grounds: the end-of-year shows at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, Central Saint Martins in London, the Städelschule in Frankfurt, and the Royal College of Art are fixtures on the calendar. Some gallerists send dedicated assistants; others have attended in person for decades. Thaddaeus Ropac is known for his regular presence at major European schools going back to the 1980s.

Artist residencies form a second natural filter. The Cité internationale des arts in Paris, the Villa Médicis in Rome, and the Jan Van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands bring together artists already selected by their peers, which cuts down the noise and concentrates the quality. Several artists who have shown with Marian Goodman or Chantal Crousel passed through these kinds of structures before entering a commercial gallery.

Instagram has profoundly altered this geography of discovery. Amalia Ulman built her critical recognition largely through social media before being taken on by galleries. Today, most artistic directors and gallery assistants maintain an active Instagram feed — not to replace the studio visit, but to identify names worth pursuing further. The Artsy platform plays a similar role for more formalised portfolios. A word of caution, though: what you see on a screen tells you nothing about materiality, actual scale, or the physical presence of a work. The final decision always passes through a direct encounter.

03The studio visit: a moment of truth

The studio visit is the central act of a gallerist's profession. It is where hypotheses are confirmed or collapse entirely. An artist whose work looked promising in photographs can disappoint in person — and equally, some pieces only truly exist in space, with their smell of fresh paint, their rough texture, their quiet presence.

An experienced gallerist observes several things at once during a visit. The working space itself — its organisation, the relationship between finished works and abandoned attempts, the references pinned to the walls — says a great deal about the artist's method and rigour. Unfinished works are often more revealing than completed pieces: they show how the artist thinks, hesitates, starts again.

The conversation with the artist is equally decisive. Not because an artist needs to know how to "sell" their work with marketing formulas — that is, if anything, often a bad sign — but because they must be able to speak about it with sincerity. An artist who can explain, without hollow academic jargon, why they made that choice of material, why that palette, why that scale, demonstrates a consciousness of their own practice that is indispensable over the long term. It is also this capacity that will carry the artist through press interviews, exhibition catalogues, and conversations with collectors.

04The artist's dossier: what gallerists actually read

Dozens of artist dossiers arrive in gallery inboxes every week. Most never make it past the first glance. Understanding why is a valuable lesson for any artist seeking representation.

The most common problem is not the quality of the work but the presentation. A 40-megabyte PDF with blurry or poorly framed images sends an immediate signal: the artist has not mastered the presentation of their own work, which suggests future difficulties with communication, press dossiers, and catalogues. A selection of ten to fifteen perfectly photographed images, against a neutral background with professional lighting, already says something serious about how the artist regards their own practice.

The statement — that short text meant to explain the approach — is the other major stumbling block. Gallerists receive pages of theoretical prose saturated with philosophical references, which obscures the point rather than illuminating it. What a good statement must achieve is simple: explain in a few lines, in your own words, what obsesses you and why it takes this particular form. At Perrotin, the story goes that the most memorable dossiers are often those where the artist had the courage of economy — fewer words, more precision.

A personalised approach also matters. An email that shows the artist knows the gallery's programme, that can name two or three artists from the roster and explain how their own work resonates with them — without being sycophantic — makes a genuine difference.

05From discovery to contract: what the gallery-artist relationship actually covers

When a gallerist decides to work with an artist, they are committing to a relationship that goes well beyond the simple sale of works. The standard contractual structure provides for a 50% commission on sales, but that bare figure masks what the gallery actually takes on: the logistical production of exhibitions, press relations, catalogues, transport and insurance costs, and a presence at international fairs — Art Basel, Frieze, Paris+ — where a stand can cost anywhere between 20,000 and 80,000 euros depending on the configuration.

For emerging artists, the gallery often advances funds for the production of the works themselves. At Perrotin, certain artists have received significant production advances before they had sold enough to cover those amounts. This is the gallerist's structural wager: investing in an artist whose market does not yet exist, in the hope that the reputation built together will increase the value of the entire body of work.

Geographic exclusivity is a point that is frequently misunderstood. A Parisian gallery can represent an artist in Europe while leaving them free to work with an American gallery for the North American market — this is the case, for example, with many artists on Perrotin's roster, including Maurizio Cattelan. This networked arrangement, which requires a relationship of trust and constant communication between galleries, has become the norm for artists operating at an international level.

06Pricing strategy: a score played out over several years

Setting prices is one of the least visible yet most consequential skills in the profession. An artist whose prices rise too quickly burns through their market: collectors speculate, sell on quickly, and the value collapses as fast as it climbed. An artist whose prices stagnate too long fails to attract the interest of serious collectors.

The most rigorous galleries apply a controlled progression based on several variables: the size of the works, the medium, the stage of the career. For an emerging painter, mid-sized formats often begin between 3,000 and 8,000 euros. After one or two successful solo exhibitions, after a museum acquisition — even a modest one, even a regional FRAC — after a presence at a mid-tier fair such as Artissima or Drawing Now, prices can legitimately move.

Entry into a public collection, even a single work, changes the picture symbolically. It signals to private collectors that the artist has crossed a threshold of institutional legitimacy. This is why some gallerists facilitate acquisitions by museums and FRACs — sometimes by offering preferential rates. That is not philanthropy: it is long-term career strategy.

07What the contemporary market demands of gallerists in 2024

The 2024 Art Basel/UBS report confirms a structural trend: mid-sized galleries — those turning over between 500,000 and five million dollars annually — are the most exposed to economic pressure. They bear the costs of an international fair presence without the financial muscle of the giants, such as Gagosian, whose estimated annual turnover exceeds one billion dollars.

In this context, breadth of vision becomes a necessity as much as a value. Galleries that managed to bring African, South American, and Southeast Asian artists into their programmes — well before those markets became marketing arguments — now hold a genuine competitive advantage. The 1-54 fair, dedicated to contemporary African art, has since its founding in 2013 revealed dozens of artists who have subsequently joined leading galleries in Paris, London, and New York.

The NFT question, following the euphoria of 2021 and the brutal correction of 2022 to 2023, ultimately accelerated a reflection that was already under way on the partial dematerialisation of the market. Perrotin launched his own experiments in this area, less out of ideological conviction than pragmatism: to miss a major technological shift would be a historic mistake, even if the definitive shape of digital art within the market has yet to be written.

What does not change, through all these upheavals, is the foundation of the profession: looking, looking a great deal, in poorly heated studios, empty exhibition rooms, and overcrowded stands beneath the strip lighting of a fair. Developing an eye takes time — years, sometimes a decade — and no algorithm has yet replaced the trained gaze that can tell, standing before a canvas, whether something is made to last.